After Enquirer report, city may buy technology that would have shown officers Kyle Plush's location

Ron Plush, father of Kyle Plush, who died in the parking lot at Seven Hills School in April 2018, and Chief Eliot Isaac address, the investigation at Cincinnati City Council. The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar
Kareem Elgazzar

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Kyle Plush's family follows along as Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac testifies before City Council's law and public safety committee regarding the response to the death of Seven Hills student Kyle Plush, Monday, May 14, 2018. (Photo: Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer)Buy Photo

The city of Cincinnati will look into buying equipment that The Enquirer reported would have pinpointed Kyle Plush's van for the on-scene officers, Acting City Manager Patrick Duhaney told the mayor and council members in a memo late Friday afternoon.

"Any technology solutions that are proven and can improve our emergency response should be considered and, if funded, implemented as quickly as possible," Duhaney wrote.

Neither the current emergency technology director nor the police chief were aware of the 2017 proposal, according to the memo.

Previous reporting:

The Cincinnati Police officers searching for Kyle Plush could have been using a computer map of his location to help find him as the teenager was dying in his van on April 10.

But despite a proposal to buy the mapping technology last summer, it never happened. The officers relied instead on incomplete information relayed from the city's emergency communications center, which fielded two desperate 911 calls from Kyle.

Documents obtained by The Enquirer show the city received a $578,000 proposal last summer that would have put the technology into every police cruiser.

Police dispatchers and city firefighters already had the technology, but police officers on the street did not. The proposal to give police the same ability to pinpoint the location of 911 callers stated it would improve public safety.

But the city never bought the technology.

So the dispatcher who took Kyle's call from the Seven Hills School campus last month saw a map showing the parking lot his van was in, but the officers responding to the school didn't. Reports and video footage from the officers' body cameras show the officers searched several nearby parking lots.

A map of Kyle's location shows a triangulation of three points, indicating the call came from somewhere in between them – in the upper lot where Kyle was being crushed in the rear of his Honda Odyssey, a parking lot officers never searched.

A city review of the response to Kyle's call, released at a City Council committee meeting Monday, says the city's dispatch equipment "does not send map coordinates (latitude and longitude)" to officers' cars automatically." It adds that the city is in the process of replacing cruiser computers and the new equipment will have that technology to "display the map with no action from the officer."

Vice Mayor Christopher Smitherman has never seen the 2017 proposal, he said.

"I'm obviously disappointed," he said. "It's just another example of how the failure to upgrade our technology failed Kyle Plush. And it shows how serious these conversations about what we need are."

Fraternal Order of Police President Lodge No. 69 President Dan HiIs said in some areas the department is lacking updated technology.

"If we can make an upgrade we should," he said. "It serves the citizens to have the best technology and it may have made a difference in this most critical of circumstances."

Kyle's father, Ron Plush, told council members Monday he still had several questions after the city investigation into his son's death was unveiled. Among the two pages of questions, nine were about the 911 center's GPS capabilities and what officers can actually see.

Dispatch issues not new

The 911 center has been troubled for years with a variety of issues, some of them related to outdated technology. In 2015, officers complained the system was slow, forcing them to go back to districts to write reports, giving them less time to patrol city streets.

So council allocated $2 million for "police information technology and equipment" for the purpose of purchasing technology and equipment for police cruisers and officers.

At the same time the city was in midst of installing a new dispatch system from TriTech Software Systems, with problems cropping up immediately. TriTech came to the city intent on making fixes, which at one point included 22 issues.

Smitherman, chairman of council's Law and Public Safety Committee, held two hearings on the matter in June 2017.

TriTech officials said fixes were in the works and noted the city needed additional technology called Inform Mobile to better connect officers in the field to the 911 center, where calls originate. Smitherman asked them to outline what the city needed and what it would cost.

The fire department had already bought and was using the technology, which included allowing firefighters in the field to see a map of where a call is coming from.

The Enquirer viewed the 15-page proposal, which was sent on June 23, 2017, to Captain Mike Fink, then head of the city's 911 center.

"Inform Mobile extends the power of information to vehicle laptop computers through sophisticated, integrated mapping components and wireless communications," the proposal says. "Officers can run ... queries, check email or message other units, all while monitoring incident and unit updates from their vehicle. This equips officers with the information they need while in the field."

The cost: $578,000.

Fink changed jobs and Captain James Gramke was put in charge of the 911 center on March 8.

TriTech officials did not return calls for comment.

"The CAD team fought for the police department to get upgraded technology that would seamlessly integrate with the TriTech CAD so they would retrieve the same information – including the mapping – that dispatchers see in the communications center," said Elizabeth Christenson, who worked in the city's Emergency Communication Section overseeing 911 technology before quitting in February. "It was out of our control. It did not happen."

She's not sure why.

In an exit memo, she wrote that then-City Manager Harry Black's management of the 911 center was so poor it "poses a threat" to public safety. Black resigned April 21 just before a council meeting was set to begin about the possibility of firing him both because of concerns about his management style and the problems at the 911 center.

How Kyle Plush died

Kyle died from asphyxiation in his van on April 10 after the rear seat flipped over and pinned him under it. While he was trapped Kyle called 911 twice, giving his location at Seven Hills School, the model and color of his van and an urgent plea that he would die without help.

Both 911 operators struggled to hear Kyle on the phone, but the first call taker used data from Kyle's Sprint cell phone to be able to see his location on a computer map.

She couldn't share that map with officers. And the officers didn't find Kyle.

This is a map showing Kyle Plush's location, which the dispatcher had but couldn't share with officers in their cruiser because the police department doesn't have the technology needed.(Photo: Provided/City of Cincinnati)

This is what the two police officers saw on their screen as they were searching for Kyle Plush at Seven Hills School.(Photo: Provided/City of Cincinnati)

Police don't have mapping, but the fire department does

In January 2017, the Cincinnati Fire Department installed mapping technology in every vehicle in its fleet, from fire engines to ambulances to district supervisors' vehicles.

Assistant Fire Chief Anson Turley said having this system provides “highly accurate” locations that help the department determine who can respond the fastest.

And, because the software runs on computers in the field, the first responders know exactly where to go.

"Of course" it was worth buying, Turley said. “Imagine your flip phone versus your smartphone, there’s no comparison with what you can do with it and how efficient it can make you."

The fire department selected Inform Mobile as an add-on to a citywide upgrade of their computer-aided dispatch from TriTech, spending nearly $300,000.

Fire departments nationwide started installing this type of mapping equipment in the early to mid-2000s, Turley said.

“We’ve wanted a system like that for years," Turley said, "but the considerations are usually money.”